Spoilers for Season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follow. Go watch it!
I love this show. I really do. I have watched all 10 episodes of the first season six times each. I will likely do so again before the new season begins on June 15. Yet, according to the person I was for over 50 years, I should hate it with a fiery, red-hot passion.
Confused?
Strange New Worlds is a prequel series to TOS (The Original Series), also known as Star Trek. It takes place about six years before Captain Kirk takes command of the Enterprise. In the year 2259, the Enterprise is commanded by Captain Christopher Pike, whom, as TOS fans know, ends up paralyzed in an accident. He appears in the season one two-parter, “The Menagerie,” which utilizes the original pilot (entitled “The Cage”) for Star Trek, but with a new wrapper featuring the characters the series ended up with. Pike is so bad off, he can only answer questions with one beep or two, to indicate yes or no. In that episode, Spock commandeers the Enterprise to return Pike to Talos IV, where Pike can live a life free from his metaphorical prison with the help of the mental illusion powers of that planet’s inhabitants.
In Strange New Worlds, Christopher Pike is in his prime, at the height of his powers, one of which has to be his remarkable hair.
This Pike is unlike most captains on Star Trek. He is charming and affable, yes, but he freely mixes and mingles with his crew, often inviting them to his incredibly spacious cabin for gourmet meals, which he prepares.
But Pike also has a slightly dark side. When he appeared in Strange New Worlds‘ predecessor, Star Trek: Discovery, Pike experienced his grisly future through the magic of Klingon time stones. Pike knows what’s coming and deals with this knowledge in different ways throughout the series.
We are given a number of other characters familiar to us from TOS, including Number One, a younger and more emotional Lieutenant (not Commander) Spock, and communications officer Uhura, a fourth-year cadet from Starfleet Academy. We also get to know Dr. M’Benga better, as he is the Chief Medical Officer of this Enterprise, instead of a guest star who specializes in Vulcan physiology, assisting Dr, McCoy. Even Christine Chapel is on board, as a nurse, maybe, but not simply a subordinate to the CMO. Chapel is an expert on manipulating genomes and can even make genetic disguises for the crew to blend in with alien races. This is where the old version of me would have gone ballistic.
Let’s start with Chapel. I love Jess Bush in this role. She’s spunky, she’s smart, she’s charming, and she and Spock have become good friends over the course of the season. They have incredible chemistry together. Gone is the pining nurse who can never have or know the Vulcan science officer. On TOS, Chapel appeared as if she had no clue who Spock’s betrothed T’Pring was when she appeared on the Enterprise viewscreen. Uhura even asked who T’Pring was. On Strange New Worlds, Chapel and T’Pring know each other and even worked together to deceive an alien who had taken over the Enterprise. This is clearly not a strict prequel, paying attention to what has aired before.
There are a whole lot more of these instances in the 10 episodes. Everyone, for example, seems to know about Vulcan mating rituals, where on TOS, it was so secret, McCoy didn’t tell Kirk even after he learned of Spock’s condition due to Pon Farr. “It is not for outworlders; intensely private,” Spock says. Yet the human characters in Strange New Worlds joke about being hit with lirpas, the traditional Vulcan weapons used in Kal-If-Fee, the mating ritual by challenge. All that said, I don’t care. The Vulcan episodes with T’Pring are fun, bordering on shenanigans. They even use callback music during a dream sequence with Spock fighting himself in “Spock Amok,” just as he will eventually fight Kirk in the “Amok Time” episode of TOS.
The Gorn, seen in the TOS episode “Arena,” are super fast and extremely aggressive in this show, very much unlike the Gorn captain whom Kirk defeated. They are a combination of the Xenomorph from Alien and the Predator, from the movie of the same name. Despite this retroactive continuity, this actually provides some entertaining and deeply moving psychological storylines featuring Lt. La’an Noonian-Singh, played by Christina Chong. She’s one of my favorite characters on the show, as she’s dealing with a whole lot of trauma and doing the best she can to get by. The Gorn episodes are not only reminiscent of TOS, but of the science fiction/action movies of the 80s. It’s a great addition to have a formidable villain that’s not a Klingon or Romulan, despite its lack of attention to the continuity of the franchise.
One of the most striking differences in Strange New Worlds is the Enterprise herself. The ship has a luxuriously massive interior, in no way compatible with the original Enterprise that everyone knows. Just take a look at the difference in the bridge scenes, as they look out the viewscreen.
Ridiculous? Maybe, but you know that if Gene Roddenberry had had this kind of money to spend and technology to utilize, he would have. This new bridge is glorious. And thanks to Episode 10, “A Quality of Mercy,” we know that this is the same as what the Enterprise would look like in their version of TOS. We are simply being asked to accept that this is what was intended, and I, for one, am willing to go along with it 100%. Honestly the art design of this show hits me in the sweet spot, combining mid-20th-century sensibilities with a view of the future that TOS Matt Jeffries gave us almost 60 years ago. It looks like the late 1950s exploded through futuristic technology. It’s like Disneyland’s Tomorrowland on steroids and I’m here for it.
One of the best ways that Strange New Worlds ties itself to the Star Trek franchise is through the music. There are callbacks and call-forwards to other great Star Trek themes. Nami Melumad grabs cues from everywhere and melds them flawlessly with her original pieces. It really works. I’ve been waiting for this score to drop forever, and today, it finally did. I look forward to writing to this music for a long time to come.
Strange New Worlds has a “truthiness” quality to it. It presents things as they might have been, could have been, or maybe even should again on Star Trek, and just tells good stories around them. I’m okay with that. I’m not just okay with that, I’m 100% onboard. With literally hundreds of Star Trek episodes and a dozen movies to limit story choices, at this point, are we really going to worry about the combination to the safe in the captain’s quarters? Ten years ago, I might have, but life is short, and the more I get to see of this show, the better.
